


When you say CBT...

by feyrelay



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, Age Difference, Aging, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blow Jobs, Bottom Peter Parker, But Tony Gets The Cage, Clothed Sex, Cock Cages, Coming Untouched, Dirty Talk, Domestic, Established Relationship, Flexibility, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Happy Ending, M/M, Medication, Mild Comeplay, Misunderstandings, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, POV Peter Parker, Porn with Feelings, Power Bottom Peter Parker, Praise Kink, Rimming, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Semi-Public Sex, Spidey Senses, Spit As Lube, Therapy, Tony Stark Bingo 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: COMPLETE.Peter and Tony deal with aging, separately and together. Peter's therapist suggests cognitive behavioral therapy, also sometimes abbreviated as CBT.Kink-related misunderstanding ensues.(Tony Stark Bingo 2020 Fill; Card #3071Square: A3 - Free in chapter 1 and Adopted Square: Cock and Ball Training (i.e. cages in this case) in chapter 2.)
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 20
Kudos: 124
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	1. Free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HogwartsToAlexandria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsToAlexandria/gifts).



It was just a generational thing, maybe. Personally, Peter was content to blame his therapist because he found intergenerational politics to be bullshit, but hey. To each their own.

The point was, it wasn’t Peter’s fault.

“Try cognitive behavioral therapy,” she’d said. “It’ll be fun,” she’d said.

(Okay, well, she hadn’t said ‘fun’. She’d said ‘beneficial’. Peter was paraphrasing.)

He went over the basic tenets of the therapy with her, asking for clarification on some of the finer points. Dr. Rosalind pointed out that changing the way he thinks about and talks to himself wouldn’t happen overnight; Peter would have to be patient with himself and with the process.

“You’ve spent most of your formative years learning to take on too much, Peter,” as Ros put it. “It may very well take just as many years to undo those habits as it took to build them. But I believe you can do it.”

And Peter, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, had shrugged. He was willing to give it a shot. He didn’t have anything better to do on a chilly, wet Monday afternoon.

***

Tony never asked about therapy, not at first. He always talked around it when Peter first got home, until it came up semi-naturally.

Peter usually appreciated that from him. Tony had come a long way in their relationship, and he wasn’t as emotionally unavailable as he’d been when Peter was his teenaged protégé. Peter was an adult now, too, and he could metabolize his own hero-related angst a little better, most of the time without Tony’s help. It was nice that Tony generally gave him space to do that.

Today, though, Peter got home and Tony looked up anxiously from where he was chopping fresh cilantro and ginger.

Tony opened his mouth, but Peter beat him to the punch. “What’re you making?” he asked innocently.

“Falafel and that spicy rice dish you like. It’s supposed to be kinda cool and rainy out, right? This’ll warm you up,” Tony answered. Peter barely got his hoodie off before Tony crowded him back into the wall of jackets and scarves. Peter was taller now, at twenty-three, but not tall enough that he’d hit his head on the mounted coat rack. Waterfalls of wool at his back, and Tony pressed along his front, Peter breathed in. _Safe._

“Hey, kid,” Tony breathed back once he was finished pressing a little kiss ‘hello’ against Peter’s top lip.

“Hey, old man.” Peter paused long enough to settle his hands at the sides of Tony’s neck, thumbing at the other man’s chin and the slightly grown-in configuration of his signature facial hair. “What do you mean, it’s ‘supposed’ to be rainy? You didn’t go outside today?” he took care to ask. 

Tony hummed and worked his jaw a little bit. “Mmmm, not so much. I was working on stuff this morning and then I missed you. I feel bad about how the weekend went. I feel bad about what I said,” Tony admitted, voice getting quieter and quieter as he went on. “I didn’t mean it. Not any of it, Peter. Okay?”

“I know. You always spew the worst bullshit when you’re low on sleep,” Peter felt compelled to reply. It was the truth, after all. Peter had three dozen data points on lab-benders that had led him, the world's foremost expert on the care and feeding of one Tony Stark, to conclude that Tony was an absolute bitch when truly sleep-deprived. And he wasn't getting any younger. 

However, Peter let Tony kiss him again, to claw back the comfortable warmth of a moment ago and also because he was very in love. Tony’s hands, curled as they were around Peter’s triceps, smelled of herbs. “Thanks for making food," Peter added into the domestic quiet of their penthouse. "I’m starving.”

“How was therapy?” Tony murmured in response. _Ah, there it is,_ Peter thought.

He disengaged himself carefully from the assortment of coats, though he took a moment to press himself more fully into Tony’s arms for a hug first, and then smacked a kiss onto Tony’s cheek too, for good measure. “It was fine. We did, uh, we did talk about you and me. But she didn’t dogpile on you or anything, not like you always hear about with therapists taking sides, not like in the movies," Peter reassured Tony.

“Well, good,” said Tony, as Peter darted away to investigate the falafel-in-progress. “Like I need a straight woman judging our gay relationship. I need _that_ like I need a hole in the head.”

 _You do have holes in your head, though,_ Peter's reason teasingly thought to pipe up. _Eyes, ears, nostrils, and that brilliant, sexy mouth,_ he would have said on any other day.

But Peter was forced to frown at Tony's particular tone, today. Dr. Ros had never been anything but professionally interested in his relationship with Tony, despite the age gap and its other inherent challenges for her client. She'd been nothing but kind and didn't deserve Tony's hypothetical disapproval. 

“She wouldn’t be judging our relationship, just your blundering through it like a bull in a china shop, sir,” Peter reminded him, voice like honey hiding venom. On the way, he caught himself snagging a sliver of fresh ginger off the cutting board to crunch it between his teeth. There was nothing like a little sinus-clearing bite to spice things up. “She suggested that my ‘intimacy issues’,” Peter continued explaining, air-quoting and eye-rolling the whole way, “come from an internalized belief that I’m not good enough for you. Not experienced enough, not worldly enough, not desirable enough. And I for one think she's right.”

 _All things rooted, of course, in our age difference, class difference, and different levels of fame and power,_ Peter didn’t add. It went without need for it, an elephant in the room, or rather… a herd of elephants. A stampede, even, it sometimes became; that generally happened whenever Peter’s abandonment issues were flaring up.

“You’re good enough,” Tony told him. “You’re more than good enough. You’re perfect, Pete.” Tony's hands found his on the counter. Peter’s fingers were made to splay out on the smooth surface. His senses quieted to deafness, taking in the cold, still stone of their breakfast counter.

Peter could still remember when it was installed; Tony had redone the penthouse, partially, to suit Peter. Together, they had settled on less snow-blinding white and silver, less minimalistic mid-century modernity. It had been substituted for more warm, vibrational wood that Peter’s senses could practically hear _through_ , more soft surfaces for his sensitive skin, more warmth, more natural colors like the blue and green and gold and garnet shot through the hideously expensive Van Gogh granite with which Peter’s mind was now occupied.

Maybe this could be like that. Maybe this could be something they figured out together.

(What Peter liked best about their home was how much they kept: Tony’s bed frame, the sectional, the stainless appliances, the frankly orgasmic shower set-up, the carpet that Pepper had picked, approximately 88% of the lab, et cetera.)

Tony pulled his hands away suddenly, like he might have been thinking Peter felt pinned. “You’re perfect,” he told Peter again, speaking into his hair.

“Don’t say that,” Peter finally managed to get out, train of thought firmly derailed. “That’s part of what Ros wants me to consider. That I don’t have to _be_ perfect or evil. That I’m not either a hero _or_ a villain, strong or weak, a bottom or a top, your soulmate or just a fling. She says I need to make room in my life for half-measures. It’s a spectrum.” He demonstrated with his hands, Tony moving around the kitchen behind him, back to cooking.

“Everything’s a spectrum these days,” said Tony, wisely. “It’s about what’s in your comfort zone. I shouldn’t have pushed you, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, kid. Promise.”

Peter was tired of apologies, though. It wasn’t that big of a deal. The whole thing was blown out of proportion.

What had happened: Tony had encouraged him to maybe switch things up in bed, had offered Peter a chance to top, if he wanted. Peter _hadn’t_ wanted and had refused rather flatly, and he’d been too tired to explain why.

(He’d just wanted to feel good. He’d just wanted to feel strong and powerful, like he always did when Tony pressed inside him with bitten-off curses and barely-there restraint. Peter had wanted all that and more, had needed to have that release with none of the associated responsibility of being in charge.)

Tony had ended up saying some things, probably hurt by Peter’s disinterest and refusal to communicate, and Peter had said some things right back, culminating in Tony’s pronouncement that Peter was “unable to relax”, “unappreciative”, and “unwilling to trust” how much love Tony has for him. Direct quotes.

Peter had _not_ enjoyed being told everything he was not. It made him, you could say, _un-_ happy.

(Basically, he'd pitched an absolute bitchfit and Tony had slept on the aforementioned sectional both Saturday and Sunday nights.)

“It’s fine now,” Peter lied, and began helping by peeling the garlic.

The falafel was very good.

***

"How was therapy?" Tony asked again, the next week. Peter went monthly, usually, but switched to weekly around the spring and fall equinox. The change in weather usually caused Peter major problems, something they'd figured out over the years. It was best to keep an eye on mood changes.

"Great. Fine. Talked about you," Peter put in. He hung his jacket up, and Tony did not meet him at the rack this time.

Instead, Tony informed Peter about his day. "I worked on the new medical adhesive. You were right about adjusting the covalency in the formula. It'll be more expensive to manufacture, volatile in the intermediate assembly stages, but way more effective. You're so smart, honey."

 _You worked on my formula without me?_ "Is there food?"

"Ah, no," Tony explained, hand scratching at his own neck. "Not yet. I got caught up working but I can make something now. We can do it together, if you're up to it. There's a new record by that band you like we could listen to; I managed to get the early print of the vinyl before the digital release. Or I can call and get us a reservation somewhere nice, if that sounds better? While you shower and change?" Tony was, apparently, feeling compelled to ramble and offer Peter every option under the sun, perhaps as a cover for what he really wanted to say: a criticism on how Peter looked like a drowned rat after forgetting his umbrella.

 _Just tell me straight that I look like shit next time._ "I'd rather stay in to eat," Peter said, a little shortly, as he pushed his own wet hair out of his face. Then he bit at his lip. The new record was a nice gesture. This was what Ros was talking about with CBT: collecting evidence that contradicts his assumptions. Why would Tony wrangle Peter a new record as a gift, if he didn't want him anymore? 

Peter was trying.

"But I'll go and shower if that's what you want me to do," he managed to add, as if there hadn't been a pause at all, "and I'll put on something presentable if you want to go out after dinner. A walk or something, if the rain lets up, maybe some shopping?"

Tony looked conflicted, the same way he often looked in the lab when he took issue with Peter's methodology but not his results. "That sounds good. Any requests for dinner? We have some nice beef that would go with the red your buddy Ned brought from California, in the summer, you remember? But I'm also not opposed to putting this cut through the meat grinder and slapping some burgers on the grill-press. It's whatever you want, kid. Say the word."

Peter wanted a drink, but he also wanted to be a little bit difficult. Sue him. He was a natural-born brat. "Can we have wine _and_ burgers?"

Tony's eyes crinkled and he smiled at Peter with his whole countenance, like Peter had done something Nobel-worthy instead of merely choosing dinner. "Hey, it's _your_ radioactive palate. You do what you want with it."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm a freak of nature, blame Oscorp," Peter joked back. He managed a smile of his own, directed at the floor.

"That'll do, spider-pig. That'll do," Tony exhaled, and the glow of that approval carried Peter through the sheer exhaustion of taking a shower, picking clothes, and putting them on. 

There ended up not being time for the record because the burgers had turned a warm pink in the middle by the time Peter's clothes were on. All that was needed was toppings, at that point. But Tony decided to put on a movie instead, and that was alright. They sat with their backs up against the couch, on the floor, and Peter licked up Tony's wrist to keep a rivulet of grease from dripping onto what-was-once-Pepper's carpet. 

Tony returned the favor by licking into Peter's mouth and, even though no wine was yet consumed, Peter found himself dizzy with delight over it after a week and a half of Tony not initiating a damned thing between them.

It didn't take long at all for Peter to end up on his back on the floor, Tony swallowing him down repeatedly, urging Peter to thrust up into his clever, wet mouth over and over again.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck, Tony, Jesus," Peter managed to mutter eloquently. 

Tony hummed around Peter's cock and curled his hands around Peter's ass, presumably doubly motivated by protecting the delicate skin there from rug burn and getting Peter to thrust deeper into his throat.

Peter wanted to cry, a little bit, because he didn't deserve such tenderness. He wanted to throw his head back and moan like a whore because it felt _so_ good; Tony was so good at this and his mouth created perfect, hot suction as he sucked Peter's cock like it was all he cared about in the world. Mostly, though, Peter just wanted to come.

But not like this. 

He managed to pull Tony off of him and Tony went willingly, though he did manage to connect their mouths as soon as he was able, before Peter could speak more than two words. "Tony, I-" 

The kiss was really something, though, something Peter could sink into. Tony pressed his tongue along the closed seam of Peter’s lips and slid his hand up the still-wet length of Peter’s cock in one smooth move. Peter’s eyes and brain both shut up shop in the same instant, and his mouth opened under Tony’s to give as good as he got. Tony’s hands were otherwise occupied, one curled into a fist slanted sideways and planted—along with a strong, tan forearm—next to Peter’s head to hold the man up, the other fisted around Peter’s hard, drooling cock between them.

That gave Peter the advantage, though he didn’t know why he thought of it that way as they weren’t exactly _fighting._ Peter fought all the same, forcing himself past the punch of lust in his gut as Tony continued stroking him off. He dragged Tony’s face back from his own, just far enough that he had room to bite back up at it, pulling at Tony’s bottom lip with his teeth hard enough that Tony groaned and quit jerking him off to slam his palm to the floor by Peter’s shoulder, seemingly desperate to hold himself up and off of Peter’s smaller frame.

“God, honey, I missed you so much. Attaboy,” Tony told him on his next breath, encouraging Peter to rub up against him. With both hands on the floor, Tony couldn’t do much besides just be there, a shield between Peter and the rest of the apartment, the rest of the world, but it was enough. Peter arched his hips just right so that the cold, smooth metal of the button on Tony’s jeans pressed at that spot under the head of Peter’s dick, shocking. He was so sensitive, and the denim covering Tony’s zipper chafed just enough at the underside of Peter’s cock. At just the right moment, Peter gasped in and tilted his chin up and met Tony’s hungry, fascinated expression.

“Mmm- sir, I. Fuck,” Peter bit out.

Tony responded with a slip-sliding kiss up the stretch of Peter’s neck before backing off. He dragged the rest of Peter’s clothes below the waist clean off, and kneeled up with his knees under Peter’s spread thighs. “How was dinner?” Tony asked him, faux-idly, and hooked two of his fingers into Peter’s dropped-open mouth. “Still hungry?”

Peter couldn’t decide if he wanted Tony to fuck him like that, or not, if he wanted just two fingers and some spit or if they should take this to the bedroom, slow things down, be smart about it. But he was content to suck on Tony’s fingers while he thought through his options, especially when Tony took Peter’s cock back in his left hand. Peter’s back bowed with the tension required to chase that touch, and he put all his weight on his shoulders to tilt his body up, up, up into Tony’s hold, whining. His legs were up around Tony’s shoulders now, more acrobatic… more _slutty_ than he usually went for, but such a good choice, especially with the way Tony’s expression went darkly calculating about it all.

“Shhh, I got you,” Tony told him. Withdrawing his fingers from Peter’s mouth, Tony shuffled up, forcing Peter’s body into an even more extreme tilt. Cleverly, he slid a slick finger around the entrance to Peter’s body, finally easing it into him as Peter exhaled. “I’m gonna see if you can come like this, kid. I bet you can. I believe in you. You’re gonna make a mess all over your own face at this angle, sweetheart.”

 _Fuck._ _Fuck. Oh my god,_ Peter’s brain repeated dumbly, picturing it.

“And I’m gonna watch,” Tony added, still fucking into Peter’s body with his hand, rubbing at Peter’s tender insides.

It was the oddest thing, but Tony’s talking like that was really what got Peter to calm down, to stretch his breaths out into something languid. All the bad tension in the room—all the stuff in Peter’s mind about this being a fight—was unmade, and only the good kind of tension remained. _He just wants me to feel good,_ Peter realized with sudden clarity. _There’s nothing else to it._

“I wanna feel good,” Peter breathed out, and Tony obligingly added another finger. It was a tight fit, maybe a little too fast, but Peter understood that too.

_My excitement is his excitement._

“You’re going to. God, Pete, you’re gonna come all over yourself in a minute. Love you so much, let me just-” and Tony got back to work finding Peter’s sweet spot, twisting and searching with strong, sure fingers inside Peter’s hot little hole.

Peter, for his part, occupied himself with keeping his balance and not letting too much of his weight fall on Tony’s shoulders. He’s strong—he’s the strong one. He don’t need no stinkin’ bed, not for this. All he needed to do was just feel, and not fall over. That’s all Tony needed from him.

When Tony found Peter’s prostate, though, Peter _did_ need to breathe hard through the hitching of his stomach. He scrambled to pull his shirt up to his armpits, exposing his jumping abs to Tony’s free hand, and his nipples to the cool air of the penthouse. “Oh god, please. Tony, you- right there. Just don’t-”

“I’m not gonna stop. I’m not gonna stop ‘til you make me, baby.”

 _I’m not gonna make you._ Fuck. Tony played him like a goddamned instrument, and Peter was just along for the ride. Peter threw one arm over his eyes, blocking out the late afternoon streaks of Manhattan sun, the paused movie on the flatscreen, Tony’s desiring watchfulness, all of it. “Keep fucking talking to me, Mr. Stark,” Peter gutted out, finally. Not that he ever called him that outside of bed, anymore, but god it was fun for right now.

“Can do. Like you could stop me. I love to run my mouth and you know it, Pete. I know you know it. The only thing I like better than running my mouth at you is blowing you ‘til you twitch, like earlier. You should have let me keep going, baby. I woulda let you come in my mouth,” Tony confessed, still pumping his fingers into the clutch of Peter’s body, still stretching Peter’s rim deliciously around their width. “You get so salty, honey, when you haven’t gotten off for a while,” Tony told him like a secret, and Peter twitched _hard_ at the sheer unexpected eroticism of such a statement. It was so intimate, to be so… known.

Jesus, but the arousal was a strong hook behind Peter’s navel, and he nearly kicked Tony in the throat trying to get… _more_. More inside him, more words in his ears, more pressure on his dick, anything Tony wanted to give him. 

It was too much to continue holding himself up in such a bizarre bend, not with the way Peter’s balls were drawing up and the way the muscles in his thighs were fluttering. In the next moment, he found himself scrabbling to change their positioning, straddling Tony instead, though Tony remained upright and didn’t lay out against the carpet as Peter had. No, Tony clearly preferred the idea of catching Peter’s mouth for another bruising kiss, hand tight and possessive on Peter’s jaw, even as Peter busied himself with rucking up Tony’s shirt and sliding his own cock against Tony’s abs. Precome slicked the way and Peter knew he was so, so close.

It occurred to him, then, that Tony wasn’t wearing a stitch less clothing than he had been through dinner, that Tony was in fact still fully dressed. He wasn’t in one of his business suits, but he might as well have been, letting Peter hump him like a naughty office puppy that belonged to no one and everyone. _Holy-_

Tony chose that moment to return his nice, thick mechanic’s fingers back to where they were most needed, and Peter sat back to let his body swallow them hungrily, panting through his nose. “That’s right, Peter, there you go. Take what you need,” Tony encouraged him. It was a slow, slightly dry drag inside him but it was perfect when he was this close to boiling over. It was just this side of painfully good.

“Gonna come,” Peter informed Tony with what felt like the last of his breath. His nails scratched through the hair at the back of Tony’s head. He held on, and Tony pressed their foreheads together even as his fingers fucked deeper, nudging over Peter’s prostate even as Peter himself shuddered violently in Tony’s lap.

“Fuckin’ do it, kid. I wanna see you. I wanna feel you clench down on my fingers, touch yourself, get yourself there, honey, I got you, I got you, jerk your pretty cock for me, Peter, I need you-”

Peter obeyed and trapped his own cock—leaking obscenely at the head—between Tony’s body and his own hand, and just shoved himself over the edge. His orgasm ripped through his senses and he floated through it while Tony crushed them together, groaning into Peter’s neck and shoulder like _he_ was coming too. Tony withdrew his fingers from Peter’s clenching hole carefully, appearing mindful of Peter’s oversensitivity, but he also continued petting at the rim until Peter was done painting shaky lines of come between them. 

His release took the last of Peter’s energy with it, and Tony had to hold him up. Peter was flushed all over anyway, but he felt the blush staining his skin deepen with the realization that he was weak as a kitten. His ears were ringing.

“That was a big one, hmm? God, you’re so amazing,” Tony told him, and Peter was forced to try and hide his face. “So sexy, Peter, really. I love you so much,” Tony continued in hushed tones.

“I love you, too,” Peter told him back. He paused. “I don’t think I can get up, though.”

“Okay, okay,” Tony said. His hands skated up Peter’s back, and he finally pulled Peter’s half-ruined shirt off over Peter’s head. He used it to wipe sweat, first, off the skin above Peter’s lips and out of the hollow of his throat, then to clean up the mess of ejaculate lower down. “We’ll sort that out. C’mere.”

Peter, shaking, did as he was told. Tony maneuvered him out of the man’s own lap and down to lay beside him in the patch of rapidly fading sun coming in the west-facing window. “That was intense,” said Peter. “Did you- are you even-” _Hard, like at all? Or are you just babying me again? Poor Peter._

He didn't know why his brain chose to fill up the blissful, post-orgasm blankness with more of the same shit it had been shoveling at him for weeks, but Peter let it happen. He was too tired to do anything else. 

Of course, Tony didn’t say anything of the sort. He loved Peter, which Peter fought hard to remind himself. 

“I’m good," Tony said instead. "I got what I needed. As long as you’re okay now, darling.” His voice was very gentle, filled with a genuine-seeming warmth.

 _No pressure, or anything,_ Peter thought.

And the sun slipped below the horizon.

***

They had sex again three days after the ‘floor incident’, as Peter had taken to calling it. Tony would come home from running errands—normal stuff like the bank, signing papers at SI, a trip to the pharmacy—and find Peter busy in the kitchen for a change. Peter was proud of himself for that. They used to share cooking duties more evenly; it’s just that he was in such a funk lately. But patrol was quiet last night and Peter got better sleep than usual. 

He could try. 

Peter was only about half-way through making the chili and rice when Tony walked in, but he was determined not to let it be a big deal. Tony crowded Peter against the sink as Peter dropped his knife in amongst the other recently-used dishes and utensils. “Hey, something smells good,” Tony said behind Peter’s ear. His hands and arms came creeping around Peter’s middle.

“I liked the rice, last time you made it. But I think the ginger shouldn’t have to compete with your famous falafel. That’s just not fair to make it live in the other one’s shadow,” Peter put in, turning in Tony's arms without dislodging his hold. “Oh, hey. You did your beard again.”

“Yeah, just a little.” Tony’s facial hair was neat again, angular. Sharp. He was wearing a suit, and though he didn’t dye his hair anymore, not for years, it looked like he might have been trying out the color-depositing conditioner. His greys were still there but the rest looked a little darker, to Peter’s practiced eye.

“You look awfully good, sir,” Peter told him, playing up a little fake, star-struck awe in his voice. 

“You’re such a bad actor,” Tony responded, but he leaned back anyway to look down at himself. “I _do_ look good, though, don’t I? I feel good. And you,” Tony continued, bringing his hands playfully up Peter’s sides to curve his thumbs over Peter’s pecs, “feel even better.”

Peter was committed to trying. He loved Tony very much, and there was no evidence that Tony didn’t want him. There was no evidence that he was disappointed in Peter at all. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary, in fact, and Peter held that knowledge like a secret light in his chest. He let it grow, expanding along with his senses until he could feel everything: the smooth way Tony’s fingerprints swept over Peter’s nipples through the high-quality material of the button-up shirt Peter had bothered to put on, determined to look half-decent for once. The low sound of sweet, fusion-inspired chili bubbling away into something that, hopefully, would go with Tony’s rice dish. The slow-bleeding crinkle of the little white pharmacy bag containing whatever Tony was taking these days, as leftover water that hadn't quite made it into the rice cooker seeped from the counter up the paper’s edges.

He armed himself with all of that, and by the time Peter came back to himself and let his eyes flutter open, Tony was already shrugging off his suit jacket. It dropped to the floor of the kitchen, the world’s most expensive piece of inconsequential debris. Peter fit his hand to cup Tony’s face, and hooked the other hand in Tony’s waistband with its expensive belt and tucked-in dress shirt.

“What now, kid?”

He pulled Tony into what started as a press of the lips, just a little plush, unspoken ‘hi’ between them. Tony’s eyes crinkled at Peter up close, though, before falling shut, and the kiss quickly deepened. Peter urged Tony more fully into his space by his belt, and opened his mouth, senses reaching out to weather literally any sensation that would be thrown at him.

Peter didn’t expect it to feel so damn _good,_ though.

It was rarely like this, now; Peter, as he aged, found it hard to both let go and be generous in bed at the same time. When he was younger, it had been a whirlwind of new experiences and discovering things about each other. Everything he tried, or let Tony try, had been new ground that bubbled up volcanically hot between them. They’d both given everything to each other, and most of what Peter had to offer, to hear Tony tell it, had been his goodness, his strength, his wonder, his shamelessness in the face of asking for what he wanted. 

Now, he worried. Peter worried about Tony's health and his own mental health. He worried about running out of things to do. He worried about how he'd ever move on if Tony got tired of him.

He worried about leaving that liminal in-between state of his early twenties where people still looked at him and saw a 'good kid' who would 'probably do alright' and started expecting to see something more that Peter wasn't sure he knew how to be.

"Are you… okay?" Tony asked, jerking Peter from his thoughts. He looked concerned. He'd taken his hands off Peter entirely. 

And then the most amazing thing happened. Peter didn't lie. "No," he said.

"Oh." Tony sounded surprised. "D'you want me to finish this and we can talk, or… not talk. We can go out, or stay in, lay down early, soak in the bath, work in the lab, take a trip out to May's…" 

Peter gathered the evidence like a scientist. Tony was giving him way too many options, it was true, but they were all _good_ options. They were all things Peter liked. Why would he do that if he was mad at Peter for being weak and boring and sad? 

He wouldn't. Also, maybe Peter wasn't that weak, or that boring, or that sad. But that was a hypothesis for another day.

He decided to be brave just a little longer.

"Can we go to bed? I'm super tired. Just dump the chili stuff in the slow cooker on low and we can wake up and eat in the middle of the night like I used to do in college."

Tony gave him a little shoulder squeeze. "Rhodey and I used to do that too."

"Right? It's the best food that way."

"Definitely. I'll take care of this and put extra water in the rice cooker, set it to keep warm," Tony planned out. He seemed pleased to be able to _do_ something, something that Peter wanted. 

Peter, for his part, bent to scoop up Tony's discarded jacket, then snagged the bag from the pharmacy. "I'll put this stuff away," he volunteered.

He just needed sleep and a snuggle, not in that order, and he’d be fine. He was _fine._

***

When they were finally settled in bed, Peter didn’t mention that he’d seen the prescription. He didn’t want to fight. He just wanted to feel good again.

“We never went out for that walk, or shopping, the other day,” Peter reminded Tony in the artificial dark of their bedroom, Friday and her smart-glass keeping the remains of the day away. He put his face into the stark white of the cheap T-shirt that Tony had worn under his dress shirt. These were the only things in Tony’s wardrobe that took bleach; everything else was either too high-quality or too purposefully grunge-y, including lab wear and old, treasured band shirts. Peter didn’t mind the faint scent at all; it reminded him of the early days of Spider-Man and cleaning blood out of his clothes. Maybe it should have bothered him, really, if he thought about it. As it was, the whole thing was just nostalgic.

Tony thumbed over Peter’s ear and the side of his head, and Peter snuggled further into him. “Maybe if we don’t lay around too long,” he said, “we can go out. Or tomorrow. Was there something you wanted?”

Peter hummed. Not really. If there was something he had wanted, he would have gotten it already. “Just to spend time with you. I’m sorry I’ve been so…” _Fucked up._

“It’s okay. It’s really okay, Peter. I want you to be however you are. This happens every year around this time, and it’s okay. I love you how you are, sweetheart,” Tony told him, and he palmed down Peter’s back soothingly. “We’ll get you whatever you need, whatever you want.”

“My hero.”

Tony snorted. “Damn right. I’ll give you everything you want, baby.”

Peter drew back on instinct, hearing the shift in Tony’s voice. It got a little deeper, warmer, and playful.

Tony was, ridiculously, winking at him in an exaggerated manner, alternating between eyes and somehow getting his eyebrows in on the action. Peter, honest to god, he giggled. _This man,_ he thought.

 _Maybe if I tell him about what Ros and I are working on, he’ll tell me about the meds,_ Peter also thought. Maybe that was the key; someone had to share first. He could be brave. It’d be worth it to have everything out in the open.

“Dr. Rosalind suggested I involve you in something that might help me,” Peter disclosed. “It was actually time before last, after you- after we disagreed about switching things up in bed.”

Absurdly, he closed his eyes. He wasn’t afraid of Tony, but it was definitely hard to talk about therapy. Deep down, Peter didn’t know that he really needed therapy at all, or that he deserved it. After all, their other superhero friends were all infinitely more fucked up, except maybe Sam, Rhodey, Dr. Banner, and the Wakandan delegation.

Tony drew Peter's attention back as he shifted his hand away from Peter’s scalp, and smoothed his fingers instead over Peter’s eyebrow until Peter opened his eyes. “Okay. Whatever it takes,” Tony told him very seriously. “What is it, the suggestion?”

“CBT.”

Tony went from holding Peter’s gaze to blinking several times in a row, very quickly. “Uh. What? No, um, okay. Well, not _no_ , I did say ‘whatever it takes’, used my superhero voice and everything, but. Wasn’t expecting that. So, not ‘no’. I just have… questions.”

Peter had expected that. Tony Stark didn’t really ‘do’ therapy, not with anyone who wasn’t one of their friends. He tried not to let Tony’s rather flustered reaction cave in his hopes. It was a struggle, to be honest. He pulled himself together, one half of the proverbially wrecked ferry at a time, linking their hands to buy a few moments. “Yeah, I figured.”

Tony bit his lip but didn’t let go, which Peter counted as a win. “Am I doing the CBT to you or are you doing it to me, in this scenario?”

Peter tried not to frown. He didn't think cognitive behavioral therapy was really something you did _to_ someone else, but he didn't want to split hairs over grammar. "Well, it's my responsibility. She was very clear that if it's going to help my relationship with myself and my relationship with you, that I need to take the lead. I just want your support."

Tony blew out a breath. "Okay. Okay, but you know that I- like, I don't _need_ this, kid. I'm happy with the way things are, so if we do this, we do it for you, not for me. The other weekend, with me asking you to switch… I wasn't _complaining._ I was just offering. I'm sorry it went south on us, but I really don't… I only want to make changes that _you_ want to make. If it helps."

That was… a lot to metabolize. But it was sweet that Tony chose to reassure him. It was sweet that Tony seemed to be emphasizing that Peter didn't need to get better overnight. "Yeah, but I think maybe this is the thing to do. She thinks it'll help me feel more confident in our sex life, instead of just along for the ride."

"Yeah, I'll say," Tony huffed. Peter didn't really _get_ that statement, but Tony was smiling so he let it go.

"Not that the ride isn't extremely enjoyable," Peter added with a smile of his own. 

"Oh yeah?" 

"Yeah." Peter hooked his leg around one of Tony's as he spoke, scooting and hitching his hips forward to make their snuggling a little more… aggressive.

"Punk. Alright then. We can hit some of the specialty shops tomorrow then. That goes well with what you were saying earlier about going out," Tony muttered even as their lips met. 

Peter relaxed even further with the sheer relief of getting everything off his chest. Their lazy kissing turned more intense as Tony grabbed Peter's hips and groaned as their mouths slid together.

"And tonight?" Peter found the presence of mind to ask between one tiny, sweet punctuative smooch and the next.

"Tonight, maybe nothing fancy yet? Ease into it," Tony suggested. "All I know is that I want you. It's been a long, weird day. Let me show you how much you're loved."

So Peter did just that, let Tony open him up with his tongue, slowly, and with his wonderful thick cock, much faster, and Peter came with his face in his pillow like a goddamned cliché without a single thing besides the sheets ever touching his dick. And he thought, _if Viagra can help us do this, then maybe I don’t care what it means,_ not that he knew what it meant at all, really.

Boneless and satisfied, Peter didn’t wake up until sunrise, twelve hours later.


	2. Caged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peruse the updated tags if you need. I tend to overtag though; there's nothing ultra-kinky here. The word 'slut' is used a couple times but in a silly, happy, we're in this together, two failboats who can't control ourselves kind of way.

Peter hadn’t realized that when Tony, last night, had said they could go to a ‘specialty shop’ on their little outing that he’d meant a sex shop. But Peter’s stomach was full of the best pizza in Manhattan and his skin was full of sunshine, and if Tony wanted to go into a sex shop, then fine.

The sales clerk didn’t have to be such a jackass, though.

He took one look at Peter and Tony, then looked only at Tony. “I assume you’re the one paying, then, sir? Might I help you find something?”

It was a complete _Pretty Woman_ moment for Peter. He was so ready to take this douchebag down. _Big mistake. Big! Huge!_ he prepared himself to say. Peter wanted to get the intonation just right.

Tony beat him to it. “You work on commission, don’t you?” he asked the clerk, leaning forward all over the high-end glass sales table. This place was nothing like the dingy, closed-off sex shops Peter had been dragged into by Michelle and Wade and Ned when he was younger. Everything in here was sleek, sculptural, sophisticated.

 _Orgasm is an art,_ it all seemed to say. _An expensive one._

The snooty clerk smiled, no doubt believing that he had hooked Tony while Peter looked around. Peter was sure that, to the man, he seemed entirely out of his element. He was sure that the clerk had no idea of the punchline that was coming his way, fast as a fist in a real fight.

And Peter loved that for them. It was great to be in sync, to know each other’s moves, to be able to trust Tony to give him the perfect set-up. It was one of those things that he would have to try and remember, the next time he said in therapy that there was ‘nothing’ better about his relationship with Tony now, after so long together, than the way it had been in that exciting, new first phase.

“I do,” the man replied on the back of that slow-dawning, unknowing smile. “Though, I assure you Mr. Stark, my highest priority is helping you find precisely what you are looking for to best fit your needs, whatever the cost. Everything we carry is quality.”

Okay, _that_ Peter didn’t love. It was always disconcerting to him, no matter how many times it happened, whenever someone called Tony by name without being introduced. In his opinion, it was gauche, not exciting. And it rankled, because if they knew who Tony was, generally they knew who Peter was, or at least they knew Tony was married. How fucking rude did you need to be to flirt with someone’s husband right in front of them? Maybe they thought it didn’t count since the ceremony had been private and unannounced to the media for six months after the fact?

But it did, in fact, count. Peter was prepared to show this guy precisely how much.

Tony, for his part, leaned just a tiny bit further forward so his sunglasses slid down his nose to reveal an unimpressed gaze—the very picture of unconcerned, wealthy, and protective dominant masculinity about to shame this rude peasant—and opened his mouth to say, “Unfortunately, I don’t do business with people who insult my-”

Peter had a brilliant idea. He looked around once more to verify they were the only patrons in the store.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted. “Forgive his little tantrum,” Peter cut in, addressing the clerk directly. “It’s just that I’ve had him out on his daily walk for ages and I believe he’s getting cranky. It’s why we stopped. He gets pissy when I don’t let him come on _his_ schedule.”

You could have heard a pin drop, Peter noted with satisfaction. The clerk stared at Peter with something like horror while Peter only had eyes for Tony’s reaction. And what a reaction it was. The sunglasses came off and were grasped loosely in a hovering hand while Tony appeared to take a deep breath even as he fought not to grin. In short, he was looking at Peter like Peter could remake his world with a snap of his fingers.

Peter was having trouble not grinning himself. This was better than a Pretty Woman moment, which would have only reinforced the stupid clerk’s economic biases. This, oh. This was going to turn the poor man’s worldview upside-down.

“Now, honey,” Peter started again, “it’s alright. You tell the nice man what you need from in here, and if you’re very polite, I will buy it for you. Although, Tony, I will say you have a lot of making-up to do before I’ll be inclined to get you any presents.”

“Do I?” Tony looked positively thrilled at the idea, though he kept his voice low. Peter tried not to laugh at the clerk’s still-frozen face.

“Yes, you were very naughty dragging me in here just because you can’t wait until we get home to have a toy. And then, to let this poor gentleman who is only doing his job, to let him call you Mr. Stark like that when you know that’s my special name for you? You forced him to flirt with you right in front of your husband, Tony… are you that much of an ignorant slut?”

“Yes, yes I am,” Tony answered immediately, no hesitation to him at all, and Peter.

Understood it. Finally.

_Click._

“Oh.” Peter straightened his shoulders. He could suddenly see the appeal of being in control. It was different with someone else watching. It was a bit like being in a fight. Showboating for the villain while buying time. “Well, it’s good that you know it. Now tell him what you came in here for.”

“I need a cage for my cock,” Tony stated plainly.

 _That_ threw Peter for a loop. He’d expected they’d buy some kind of fancy plug or maybe some rich-people lube made out of Icelandic spring water and gold or something. He decided not to let his confusion show, though. Confidence was key. He channeled his inner Tony Stark. “Yes, he does.”

The clerk looked back and forth between Tony and Peter a few times before taking what Peter could only call a cleansing breath. “Of course, sir,” he finally said, addressing Peter. “What color and um… what experience level?”

Peter looked to Tony for that one. He was enjoying posturing for this guy but not so much that he’d put Tony’s health in danger through his own ignorance, if Tony actually wanted to wear such a thing. “Blue,” said Peter at the same time that Tony answered, “Red.”

He made an executive decision. “Blue in the most beginner level that you have,” Peter hedged his bets. “Red in the next level up. Control is the goal, not pain?” he hypothesized, and Peter hoped that he sounded rhetorical rather than questioning.

“Of course, sir,” the clerk responded instantly, which Peter found gratifying. “I’ll be right back with some options for you both.” He started to move across the room, then paused. “Is there any particular shade of blue you were after? We carry one line in medical-grade silicone that comes in many different hues, and I could even have it custom-batched for you. The red, I believe I can guess at.”

Peter met Tony’s eyes over the man’s shoulder. Tony licked his lips, shades back on now, expression otherwise inscrutable.

“Spider-Man blue, if that means anything to you. But I don’t think this one can wait without pitching a bitch fit, so no custom, just pick the closest one,” Peter said.

Tony snorted and Peter lifted his chin as the salesman hurried off. A moment passed and Peter shivered a beat before the tinkle of the shop’s door chime sounded. Peter stepped forward to crowd Tony away from the sales counter, manhandling him around a corner of a showcase to give them more privacy. The last thing he wanted was for someone to sell this story to a tabloid.

Not that it was really a story. _Iron Man Has Super Sex Sometimes With His Spouse._ Not really a killer headline. But of course, they wouldn’t write it that way. Some people, for whatever reason, seemed prepared to insist there was something inherently kinky about two men being married, particularly two men with so many years between them.

In truth, the 'kinkiest' thing Peter had done in the past year was blow Tony while balancing a tablet on his head, trying to motivate him through the home stretch of looking over their taxes. The accountant couldn't do them since they were filing jointly and the IRS arm of the rebuilt SHIELD knew he was Spider-Man, but the accountant didn't. 

But Peter forced himself away from that train of thought, and focused on avoiding the other couple in the store, a hetero couple.

Credit where credit was due, their salesman came gliding back and led them to a private showroom, another salesperson a step behind him to go and wait on the other couple. Peter heard the woman greet the pair before the partially glass door shut behind him.

“These are our floor pieces; if you’d like to take home a piece or two today, then I’ll need Mr. Stark’s, uh, measurements. The silicone has some flex, so it comes in a variety of standard sizes. Level 2 here, in metal, needs a more precise fit, which I can take care of in-store.”

The nervousness came through in Tony’s voice. “Uh, how, exactly?” This wasn’t a game anymore. Peter picked up the red metal cage. It wasn’t scary-looking or anything; the metal was ergonomic and rounded, crisscrossing in a vaguely tech-inspired pattern that left plenty of skin open to the air, and there were no welded seams on any of the metal lines. It seemed to fit together in pieces that locked into each other using tension alone. It would come apart if the dick trapped in it got soft unexpectedly, but it seemed like a tight fit around the base mostly prevented that from happening.

Peter could see why it required a precision fit. And the device was right up Tony’s aesthetic alley.

Swallowing, Peter put it down to pull his own sunglasses from his jacket pocket. Donning them, he called for Friday, using the name she answered to when he was in public. “Siri, extrapolate the correct measurements from archival footage.”

Their guy, Grant, going by the business card he’d just handed to Tony, coughed delicately. “These metal cages are meant to be used when erect. They prevent completion but not arousal, so as not to harm the user who is still learning control. Think of it as a particularly baroque cock ring. In pigmented palladium.”

Peter regarded him coolly. That much he had gathered from the object’s shape. “Siri, I said what I said. Archival footage.” _Surely this guy knows what a sex tape is._

He snapped his fingers and mimed writing. Grant handed over a small piece of paper onto which Peter carefully wrote the narrow range of numbers Friday was providing across his vision.

“Is this specific enough to get a fit?”

“Yes, I think so,” the clerk informed him, passing the note over to Tony without an ounce of judgment in his expression. In this, at least, the man was a professional. “Does that look right?”

What Tony said next shocked Peter so hard that his own cock twitched regardless of how tight his jeans were. “I don’t know, man. I may be Iron Man but I really can’t be trusted with my own dick. I’m a disaster. Also, that other one you’ve got isn’t anywhere near Spider-Man blue. That’s Captain America navy and I’m not into it.”

Peter tried desperately not to choke. Tony winked at him when Grant wasn’t looking. _My husband is apparently also a natural-born brat. We’re a matched set._

Peter ended up having Tony wait for him at the café on the corner, sending him away with a flirty little reprimand and a smack to Tony's truly fantastic ass, both of which had Grant’s eyes widening for the umpteenth time. Peter finished up their business, taking the now-fitted red metal cage and leaving the other, though not before commissioning a custom training cage in a brighter, bluer silicone. He’d pick it up next week.

It felt good to make plans for the future, even the very near future. It felt a lot better than going day to day.

It felt even better to pull out his Black Card, the one that had _his_ name on it, and not Tony’s, the one with the custom chip design that looked like a spider logo when the light hit it just right.

“Thank you for your business,” Grant told him politely.

“You’re very welcome,” Peter responded blandly, taking his card back and shaking the other man’s hand. He gripped it, not too tight, but tight enough to prevent the handshake from dropping before he was ready. “One more thing.”

“Yes, Mr. Parker, sir?” _What a douche; I wonder if he only remembers people's names from their credit cards._

“Next time, you hand the business card to me, no one else. Flirt with my husband again and I’ll put you on The Raft.” Peter dropped Grant's hand as the other man sputtered. “The _outside_ of The Raft.”

And he smiled all the way to the café.

***

They barely made it in the door.

"Please tell me you chewed him out after I left. _Please._ "

"You bet I did. We simultaneously educated that dick like he'll never forget, and also probably confused him all to hell. He definitely thinks you're a bottom," Peter informed Tony, continuing to press him back into the wall under the coat rack. Tony's sunglasses were pushed up over the man's head, which pulled his hair away from his face. Peter stood on tip-toe to kiss one of the fine lines on Tony's forehead.

"I _could_ be."

Peter groaned. "Not this again. You'd tell me if you really needed it, right? I'm not averse to giving you a finger or two during a really invasive blowjob. But otherwise, meh."

Tony shook his head. Coats rustled behind him with the movement. He was looking at Peter like he just couldn't believe him. "Meh," he repeated. "Lordy. Okay, s'your call. I don't need it. I'm very content with my lot in life being breaking into your body as often as possible."

He almost choked at that phrasing. "What is this, Hamburglar roleplay-" 

"Shut up. I'm just saying you did really well in the store today. Very sexy. Very dominant. Forget about Death of a Salesman in there remembering it. _I'm_ the one who's never gonna forget it." Tony's hands traveled down out of their embrace to palm over Peter's ass, which was very enticing, but Peter was still stuck on what Tony was saying.

"It felt like being someone else. It's like when the mask goes on and I start quipping and dodging bullets. That's not really… me," Peter said uncomfortably.

The kiss Tony pulled him into at that painfully honest statement was very gentle. He held Peter's face still for it, not so much pushing their lips against each other as failing to _stop_ them from coming together, as if it was the natural order of things. Peter let it happen, dared not interfere, let the magnetism marry them softly between breaths. "It's not _not_ you," Tony rumbled into the scant space. "It's just another side to you."

 _And I love every side,_ Tony didn't have to say out loud. Peter felt it, vibrational between them in the best way, a perk of having both superior senses and a superior sort of man to love him. 

"Easy for you to say, old man." Peter pulled back to look Tony in the eye. He did the famous peace sign and everything. "I _am_ Iron Man," Peter mocked him, though not meanly.

_Not everyone has it so easy. Not everyone can just play themselves on the big screen._

Tony smiled about it. "Nah, you're better than Iron Man. Heard he's all washed up."

"What, in _The Bugle_?" 

"No, online. Holed up in some penthouse with someone way too young for him. He went full Dennis Quaid, they said." Tony started unbuttoning Peter's denim jacket for him and Peter let him. 

"Dennis Quaid is hot," said Peter thoughtfully. "I didn't know whether to look at him or Jake Gyllenhaal in _The Day After Tomorrow._ Also when he tells off the gold-digging fiancée in Parent Trap. Big literal dad energy."

"You have a type, sweetheart," Tony told him, finished now with the jacket and moving on to sneaking his hands up under Peter's punny tee.

"Lucky for you."

"Extremely lucky for me," Tony agreed. For once he didn't go for Peter's sensitive nipples. Tony just petted along Peter's ribs and sides and abs and lower back, calming. It was at once a sexual and non-sexual sort of touch. 

Peter settled into it, resting a hand on Tony's shoulder even as the other hand thumbed up the line of Tony's throat, which Tony bared for him with an easy sort of grace, tipping his head back against the wall. Peter sucked a kiss onto his husband's Adam's apple, and felt Tony swallow under his lips.

"Peter."

"Yeah, I know. Bed?" 

"Bed."

They left the bag with their purchase on the floor of the hallway. 

***

It didn't come up for another week. The shopping bag sat there, nestled between pairs of infrequently used boots, waiting. 

This time things got rolling _before_ therapy, which Peter didn't have until later in the day. Today, they had Morgan who had cleverly begged off the day after Labor Day to give herself a four-day weekend.

"Daaad, it's not a big deal. Half my class is still off skiing or whatever, the teachers won't even teach. They'll just put on a movie."

Tony hugged his daughter to him and gave Peter an inquisitive sort of look over the top of her head. 

“Unfortunately, that sounds about right,” said Peter.

“Alright, well, I’ll defer to both generations of superior scholarly expertise. Morgan, you want pancakes or waffles?”

“Mom made me eat some fruit before we left. It was all healthy.”

Peter hauled the girl up with her arms around his neck, which she was really getting far too big for, and set her on one of the stools at the breakfast counter. “I fail to see your point, Maguna Matata. Carbs are carbs. We don't turn down carbs, especially when your dad is making 'em.”

“You get a vote, too,” Tony told him.

“Waffles,” he stage-whispered to Morgan, and she giggled, spinning ‘round in her seat to face the kitchen.

“Waffles it is! Majority rule,” she declared. Her favorite class these days was social studies and Peter was very proud of her for it.

“Uhn-uh,” Tony started, and Peter knew him well enough to know that they were in for an entire bit. Tony loved to clown for his daughter, and Peter loved to watch him do it. “What about minority rights, Morgan? Majority rule can’t override those. What about pancake rights?”

“To what, be flat?” Peter put in.

“That’s not in the charter of breakfast rights,” Morgan told them both. She was so going to get an ‘A’ in this class, especially since she had asked Peter for his help with her presentation, which was due in two weeks. He couldn’t lie, he’d teared up a little just at being asked. Add that to the list of things he and Tony hadn’t had when Peter was nineteen and just the new squeeze and occasional babysitter. Co-parenting... it was fucking great. The greatest.

“Maybe it should be,” Tony pointed out. “Why should we be allowed to force any one shape on the batter before its time? Do they not both come from the same flour and egg? If you stir them both, do they not blend? What value do the square crevices of waffles yield, that pancakes’ griddly goodness doth deny us as a nation?”

Morgan’s rebuttal: “Waffles hold the syrup better.”

“Okay,” said Peter. “That’s foodist. It’s a stereotype. You can totally inject the pancakes with the syrup, or fold them, or crimp the edges, or eat them in a bowl. All reasonable accommodations. Also, not everyone likes syrup, Morgan. What about the butter-only vote?”

“You mean the serial killer vote?”

 _She’s like, twelve. She shouldn’t be worried about serial killers. She shouldn’t even know what that is._ Peter felt instantly old. But he covered it, because that’s what you were meant to do with kids. “The ad hominem attacks have begun already. Getting into politics has really changed her.”

But Morgan was beaming up at him. “Get it? Cereal killers…?”

“Oh my god,” Tony started. “She’s filibustering with jokes. I am so proud.”

“She’s definitely yours,” Peter murmured and kissed the top of Morgan’s head, which she promptly wiped off.

Silently, as Morgan ducked under the counter to untie and remove her shoes, Tony mouthed: _Yours too._

Peter appreciated that more than he could say. When Morgan, after breakfast, found that she had managed to dip the end of her braid in syrup, Peter sent her off to shower and took the opportunity to try showing Tony exactly how much he did appreciate it.

“She has gymnastics at four-thirty and May’s picking her up,” Peter informed Tony as they gathered the dishes up. “Drop her off, put yourself in the cage, and pick me up at six from Dr. Ros’s office.”

Tony made a face. “Is there anything less sexy than scheduling sex?”

Peter made a face of his own right back. “Did I say anything about sex? You wear the cage, you pick me up, we go to dinner, we do whatever, but honestly I could leave you in that thing for a week if I wanted to. Just because you’re picking me up doesn’t mean I’ll need you right away.”

It was gratifying to watch Tony's pupils blow out wide and dark. “Oh.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Oh,” Tony said again. “Yeah, I can do that.”

"See that you do, Mr. Stark."

***

Dinner was torture. Peter wanted to see. But Tony had made them reservations somewhere nice and not too far from the penthouse, and Peter’s therapy session had gone great, and he was going to try and control himself.

He made it through soup, salad, and entrée. Dessert would have to wait, Peter decided, slipping off to the restroom knowing that Tony would follow him shortly. The place was fancy and the rooms were individual and separated, if small. Single occupancy.

Not that Tony had ever met a rule he couldn’t break. Peter heard the door of the room next to his open as he was washing his hands, and shivered in anticipation. It quickly closed again and Tony joined him, shutting the restroom door after himself.

“Found you.”

“Oh my god, please let me see. I can’t believe the maître d’ let you in in those jeans.”

“Suit pants wouldn’t have been thick enough to hide what I got for you, baby. I’m Tony Stark; I do what I want,” Tony told him, and _god,_ but the rough quality to his voice was almost enough to derail Peter’s plans entirely. He almost asked Tony if they could just go home and fuck it out.

But, no. Peter dropped carefully to his knees, looking up. _Step one complete._

“Oh, god, Peter, you’re not going to…?”

 _Yes, yes I am._ “Unless you’d rather I didn’t?”

“No, no, no, _please_ do. I’ve been hard for almost three hours, honey. Fuck,” Tony gutted out. Peter always loved it when Tony cursed; he’d been taught that the use of expletives was a sign of low intelligence and since that obviously wasn’t the case with Tony, Peter was usually forced to interpret them as markers of extreme emotion.

In this case, it was extreme arousal. Desperation, even.

Peter popped the button on Tony’s jeans and drew down the zipper. His mouth was already watering. The feeling increased threefold when he found that Tony wasn't wearing underwear.

Just the cage.

The candy-apple red complimented Tony's flushed skin, and the angular, fitted metal design looked for all the world like a bizarre excerpt from Tony’s Iron Man suit, giving Peter a sudden idea. “Gauntlet,” Peter gasped, even as he nosed along Tony’s length. It felt unbearably exotic to have his nose and his mouth and the skin in-between the two bump haphazardly along the metal encasing Tony's cock. _So weird. So good._

“What?” Tony asked him faintly, as if he hadn't been able to pay attention. “I mean, I have them; I always do, but…”

“In my hair,” Peter explained. “Pull me, hold on, fuck my mouth.”

Tony’s abs jumped under Peter’s sneaking hands. His cock did the same under Peter’s lips, where Peter pressed them to the bare, unencumbered tip with its silky texture. “Fuck-”

“Did you take a Viagra to get this?” Peter asked, just before making his tongue a point and flicking it insistently under the heavy head of Tony’s dick, right where the topmost rounded edge of the cage began. He kept his mouth open so Tony could watch him do it.

“No,” Tony told him, voice breathless with honesty and how turned on he seemed to be. His cock bounced against Peter’s tongue as Peter laved over the head and earned himself the barest smear of a salty taste for his trouble. But Tony still wasn’t going for his gauntlets. “I had this fantasy about you going to pick up the other cage, the one you ordered, and you put it on me in the back of the car and we drove out to the compound with you teasing me the whole way, with the partition up. It was so hard not to just jerk off, baby, but I saved this for you.”

Peter closed his lips over Tony's cock, just past the tip, and sunk down around it with his whole mouth. The confining lines of the cage made his lips jitter, and he knew they'd be puffier than usual by the time he was done. Everyone in the restaurant, everyone who looked at him… they would know what he'd done. Peter pulled off after just one pass, with a pop. 

"Thank you, Mr. Stark," he said faux-demurely. They'd never done anything like this when Peter was under 20, too afraid of social censure. Now, they didn't give a flying fuck. "This is what I really wanted for dessert, sir. Will you please give me your cock down my throat? Please?"

(He tried not to laugh, because it was so ridiculous, but there was something healing about pretending to be much more innocent and needy than he really was.)

Tony snorted at him, at the expression Peter was sure was on his face as he looked up at the man through his lashes, but it was a sound that Peter knew meant he was happy and in love and so, so willing. "Sure, sweetheart. Since you asked so nicely. So _uncharacteristically_ nicely."

Peter squawked a little at that as Tony pulled him onto his cock. Peter relaxed his throat obediently, eyes closing, but inside he was thinking, _Hey, fuck you, buddy. Fuckin' guy. Jesus. I love you._

He let himself be skull-fucked for several thrusts, getting used to the taste of metal in his mouth that interrupted his tongue's typical savoring of Tony's clean skin on the underside of the man's cock. Peter let himself float through it, let their pulses synchronize, let the hot, fat head topping Tony's length kiss and block the fluttering back of his throat for a microsecond on every bob down. 

Peter fucking loved doing this, loved working together to make sure Tony didn't go too deep, loved palming and thumbing over the denim covering Tony's flexing thighs. Peter even loved the ache in his knees, the spit down his chin. 

He also loved setting the perfect trap. 

Tony realized it too late. He stopped Peter's momentum suddenly, pulling his cock from Peter's warm mouth without ceremony. "Fuck, I forgot," he said, and Peter wiped his own chin, licked over his own teeth as he waited. "I can't come like this, Pete, and god I want to, but the cage- it. It blocks-" 

Peter sat back on his heels and pushed his wrecked hair out of his face. "So take it off, Tony," he suggested coquettishly. The _'duh'_ was implied. 

His husband responded just how Peter expected him to. Tony's voice was frustrated, even a little whiny around the edges if Peter listened hard enough, as he finally admitted it. "I don't know how."

Of course, the salesman had shown Peter how, after Tony left. It was just a little catch between the pieces that met under the base of Tony’s cock. Nothing too terribly complicated, but once that was undone, the rest of the tension holding the other pieces would fall away and it would come right apart. It was a precision-fitted device. And Tony didn’t need to know any of that to have slid it on as he was getting hard.

He didn’t need to know any of that now, either.

“Poor baby,” Peter said to him instead. “I could tell you, but do you really need to know? Is this cock yours to do what you want with?”

Against the expensive wallpaper, Tony let his head fall back. He breathed out hard through his nose as Peter watched. “No, it’s yours. If you want me to come, you’ll take me out of it.”

“That’s right. And if you want me to want that, you could start to listen better. You could stop being afraid of hurting me and get those gauntlets out like I asked a minute ago.”

Tony bit his lip and shifted his hips against Peter’s restraining strength. Peter loved to see it, loved to see the conflict play out across such a handsome, beloved face.

Finally Tony double-tapped his wristwatch and the matching band of metal that made up a rather masculine bracelet on his right wrist. Pulling sunglasses from his inner pocket, Tony donned them just long enough to tell Friday to disable weapons systems before putting them away again. “There, are you happy?” he asked, sifting nano-encased hands through Peter’s hair, only his fingertips exposed. They scratched at Peter’s scalp lovingly.

“Very.”

And that was the last thing Peter said as he swallowed Tony and all his metal adornment down again. Peter was good at this and he knew it wouldn’t take much longer. Perhaps, if he’d been feeling more expressive when they’d fought about Peter topping, Peter could have told Tony in detail why he liked this. 

‘This’ being: licking and sucking at skin no one else gets to even _see._ Being invaded at the mouth (or the ass) and pushing back against that until they’re both weak with pleasure from physically grandstanding with all their separate yin-yanging strengths. Weathering the sheer sexiness of having an older lover, looking at all that hard-won stamina, that salt-and-pepper hair and the power and experience it seems to signify, and outlasting it with his own wantonness. Every time.

In short: taking it. And taking it so goddamned well that Peter turned his own self on, _knowing_ he was good at it.

He couldn’t tell Tony all of that, at the time. But he could show him now.

Tony was very gentle in the way he handled Peter’s head with the gauntlets. He barely pulled, barely needed to with the way Peter just hinged his jaw open and blew him like he was born to do it. And Peter appreciated that; he didn’t actually like pain all that much, especially accidental pain that lacked purpose.

But he wanted Tony coming down his throat in the next two minutes before their well-meaning waiter interrupted to check on them, so he reached up and threaded Tony’s gauntlets more firmly through his waves of hair, and then, instead of returning his own hands to smoothing over Tony’s jeans, he snuck them up under the cage and cupped Tony’s rapidly-tightening balls in the way he knew Tony liked.

“Fuuuck, kid, you’re playing dirty,” Tony exhaled, and his hands tightened further, but not so much that Peter couldn’t just barely ease off of Tony’s cock long enough to replace his cupping fingers with his tongue. Peter sucked and teased at Tony’s sac, both sides, and Tony gasped brokenly from above. “Shit! Peter, please take it off, god _damn, please, baby,_ just take it _off-_ ”

“Ask nicely,” Peter mumbled, tonguing up the underside of the cage just purposefully enough that if Tony had any working brain cells left, he’d know he could have had that feeling running all the way up his cock vein like a live wire. Basically, Peter was feeling both mean and kind in the same breath.

(As per usual.)

As if he’d needed Peter’s permission to open his mouth and ply Peter with compliments and filth, Tony started talking a mile a minute almost immediately. “Your hair is wrecked, darling,” he said to Peter even as Peter fit his lips to the weeping, soft head of Tony’s cock and teased him by practically making out with it.

Tony’s hips shuddered in Peter’s strong grip and Peter groaned and scratched short nails over any denim he could reach, incidentally causing him to grasp Tony’s ass at the sides in great handfuls, only his thumbs left pressing hard at the front of the older man’s pelvis, to hold Tony back. _God, you’re killing me,_ Peter thought. _If we weren’t in semi-public, I’d let you choke me and be done with it, die happy._

But Peter continued his obscene kissing even as Tony really hit his verbal stride. “I’m going to come in your pretty mouth and you’re going to hold it for me,” Tony informed him, voice wrecked, and Peter let that thought _zing_ through him, through his brain and down his spine straight to his own cock and balls and prostate. “I’m going to walk you through the restaurant with your wrist in my hand,” Tony continued, gravel in his voice, “...and demand our dessert and our check and put you in the back of our car where no one else can see us and lick myself out of your mouth, honey.”

The _mmmm_ sound that that drew out of Peter, he knew, must have vibrated against Tony’s slit, and despite the cage’s best efforts, Peter was rewarded with just the tiniest pearl of precome, which he lapped up and took as his signal. Before he could act on it, though, Tony had more to say. 

“I’ll just clean you right out, and then feed you the sweets as a chaser, because you’re so good, Peter, you’re _so good_ , and I don’t deserve you, not at all, but no one else deserves me, either, and,” Tony panted, interrupting himself to finally, finally, _finally_ use those strong, semi-armored hands to urge Peter down, down, down the hot, hard caged length of him, “and I don’t _want_ anyone else, you’re all I want. You’re all I want, however you want me for as long you want me, for forever, Pete. Forever, sweetheart, _please._ ”

Peter let those words ricochet around in the sudden comforting blankness of his brain, his need for praise and reassurance sated, causing his head to empty. He luxuriated in that feeling and let Tony drag him by the sides of his lax jaw and head, up and down the man’s cock, the lines of the cage making it a rough but exciting ride.

He reached underneath to the catch of the cage and unlocked it on a downstroke, and it came apart in his hands as his lips were hauled back up the length of quickly-revealed cock. Tony hissed. “Yessss, please, oh my god, _Peter._ ”

He hummed in response and fucked his mouth up and down a few more times, Tony shuddering on each pass which felt so smooth and easy now that Tony’s gorgeous, thick cock was unfettered. On his last pass, he felt their pulses line up and Peter nearly missed Tony’s muttered, unneeded warning. He was too focused on mouthing, needy, at the head and getting his last slurp of mild, salty-sweet precome before actual, thicker and more bitter ejaculate filled his waiting mouth. Tony, undone, ended up half-curled over him, his gauntleted hands hot as sin through the thin material of the dress shirt stretched tight over Peter’s shoulder blades.

They softly pet at each other as Tony came down, with Peter just savoring it all.

Best. Blowjob. Ever. _Giving OR receiving,_ Peter thought. Then, quieter even in his mind: _Giving **is** receiving. _

He swallowed, though, because there was a difference between romantic language and a complete disregard for social expectation.

***

In the end, it was _Peter_ who wrestled a near-boneless Tony into the back of the waiting car. New York City night, nearly as bright as day, found itself blacked out by tinted windows. Thank god it was one of the SI driverless fleet too, because they were both shameless.

Peter got Tony settled and got him half-out of his jeans again before Tony thought to wonder aloud why they weren’t moving. “Uh, what’s up with this?”

“I have a surprise for you,” Peter murmured, and Tony snapped his attention to Peter with a look of confusion, possibly because he’d expected Peter’s mouth to still be full of his come.

 _Haha, still a step behind,_ Peter thought, and he beamed at Tony happily, even as Tony drew him in for a sweet kiss. “Hi,” Tony said, smooching at his lips and cheeks and jaw like he was trying to figure Peter out by virtue of his mouth alone. “You wanna clue me in, here, kid?”

“Sure. For one thing, I don’t take orders from you, so I was gonna need a better reason to walk around a Michelin-starred restaurant with jizz in my mouth. Second, you bought dinner, I brought a present. Simple, right? Fair and balanced.” Peter reached down to the footwell and put his hand in the shopping bag there, pulling out a modestly sized box. It was, you could say, about the same size as the various pieces of red metal filling up his pockets, if they were all put together again.

He slid the inner box out of its luxury sleeve and Tony’s eyes widened. Tony took it from him and Peter took his moment of distraction and engaged in a little light sleight of hand to slip his second surprise into his own mouth.

Nestled there, in the box and taking up Tony’s attention in its flashy custom packaging, was the second cock cage, and it was beautiful.

Not only was the thing a perfect shade match to Spider-Man blue, in highly flexible body-safe silicone, but Peter had also forgone the standard grid-pattern for the design of the cage. This one was a criss-cross of gossamer strands that would mold themselves to Tony’s dick, soft or hard.

It was a web pattern.

“Fuck-”

“Put it on,” Peter managed around the surprise.

“I don’t know if I can go again… Jesus, honey, I’m not twenty-five anymore, I dunno if-”

“It goes on soft, alright? You can do it, sir, I believe in you,” Peter told him tenderly, softly, so as not to give anything away. “And even if you can’t, it’ll fit just fine. That’s enough for me. As long as you’re okay, as long as you’re mine.”

“I’m always yours,” Tony responded, seemingly on instinct, and Peter melted into his open lap, sliding the cage onto him with some difficulty, but not enough to disturb their kiss. Peter got Tony’s soft cock into the thing, which wasn’t as fitted as the red metal had been. This blue one was roomier. Then he got his tongue in Tony’s mouth and gave him a little blue pill to match it.

It was a testament to how much Tony trusted him that he swallowed it, no questions asked until afterward, especially given Tony's substance abuse history.

“Was that…?”

“You bet.” Peter grinned up close at him. “Driver,” he called at the computer, “please take us home before Round Two: Boner Pill Boogaloo kicks in?”

“You are unreal,” Tony breathed, letting his head fall back against the leather headrest. He held onto Peter tightly, with Peter figuring it was in case they were in an accident. He himself thought it was highly unlikely given the quality of SI’s driverless programming, but he appreciated that Tony had a thing about car accidents.

“No, you,” he said back, and climbed out of Tony’s lap to settle properly in his seat and buckle in.

Tony gave him a look that seemed both grateful and fond, and Peter drank it in. _Everyone has their fears and insecurities,_ he thought.

Peter reached over and adjusted the cage just a little, then carefully tucked Tony's restrained cock back away. He stretched to fuss with Tony's zipper, his button, his shirttail, his seatbelt as they made their way home through traffic. Tony let him.

"You're killin' me, Smalls."

Peter just leaned back in the comfortable leather seat, rolled his head against the head cushion, and looked at Tony askance. "You'll live. I won't let you die."

"I know, baby. I was just being a whiny hound dog… I can't wait to get home. Get you into bed."

Peter hummed. He was a little sleepy.

"I'm gonna lay you out, kid. I'm gonna _eat_ you out, fuck dessert. I can't wait to be inside you."

 _Shit._ Peter let himself think about it, shifting. His eyes fluttered closed; he was content to merely listen to Tony's low, rough voice for now.

"This CBT thing is so intense," Tony said next.

Wait.

"I-" Peter frowned. "I thought we were talking about sex. I mean, yeah, therapy went great today but… go back to the other thing. I was getting into it."

There was a pause. "Tell me what went great."

"No, I-" Peter was trying not to get frustrated. He wanted his arousal buzz back. "We talked about a lot of stuff, okay? About how you and I make too much of each other sometimes; I've always complimented you, maybe too much, on your stamina and experience and capability, all the things you can do for me and for others, and it probably puts a lot of aging-related pressure on you. You don't have to be perfect, Tony."

Tony took that in seemingly solemnly, but Peter's senses could pick up a sudden sort of manic, mirthful energy pouring off his husband. "What else, kid?"

"Ummm, fuck, I dunno. A lot. Stuff about how just like with me focusing my love on that one side of you, sometimes maybe you focus your love on my youth. Energy. Beauty. Strength. It makes me afraid a little, of what would happen if I lost those things, either all at once or over time. But Ros is helping me challenge those assumptions and think about all the good stuff we have together that has nothing to do with me being young or you being perfect. There's a lot of good stuff like that. Stuff I could have never had at nineteen. And there's a lot of evidence that you love me for who I am, and always will."

Peter didn't know why his eyes chose that moment to get wet. And Tony was just as gone as him, though apparently in the other emotional direction. To Peter, he seemed like he wanted to laugh, but when Tony spoke again his voice was very gentle. "Well, all of that is perfectly true, kid. One hundred percent. Strange could break in and age you thirty years overnight and I'd still adore your every atom. But, sorry, say again, what was that style of therapy called? That you two are doing?"

"CBT," Peter answered swiftly, finding it easier to address that than the other, more meaningful words Tony had given him to contemplate. "Cognitive behavioral therapy, remember? I mentioned it. Oh, hey, we're home."

"Yes, yes we are," Tony agreed, like he was thinking something else. Like he was promising something else.

***

Tony sat in his clothes on the closed lid of the toilet while Peter showered, because sometimes the water beating down on him made his brain wander too much and he got sad. Though, not tonight.

"I love you," Peter said, apropos of nothing, when he was almost ready to rinse off.

"You must, to have planned everything so precise. What, did you web to the sex store from Ros's office and back again before I picked you up? Not to mention snatching my meds from in here like a little thief…"

Peter paused, letting the hot water unwind his tense shoulders. "Mayyyyybe."

"I was gonna call you 'Boy Genius' but you're not a boy. 'Brat Genius' will have to do."

Peter turned the water off even as he smiled. "Fair enough." Tony met him with a fluffy towel, and kisses, and a burgeoning hard-on. "How are _you_ doin'?" He said it like Joey from Friends but meant it quite sincerely.

"I'm good, honey," Tony replied gently, leading him back into their bedroom while Peter dried himself off. "And I did promise to lay you out. And more."

Peter sucked in air and Tony manhandled him obligingly onto their bed, whose blankets were already pulled back. "My hair is still wet," Peter warned, but Tony just snorted at him.

"Let me show you how much I couldn't care less, kid."

"Mmmm," Peter hummed. "M'sleepy."

"A hot shower, good food, and getting your mouth fucked good and hard tends to do that to you, Pete." Tony's hand paused where it was massaging Peter's bare back. "Do you wanna stop and go to sleep?" 

"No, I want you to keep going, I just don't wanna do any work," Peter managed to say somewhat more coherently, snuggling into his pillow. "Are you all the way good to go?" 

"All for you, hon. And all you gotta do is undo this little band for me. I know how it works but you're in charge of my dick, remember?" 

The full-body shiver Peter got from that was mostly arousal, and his own half-mast cock started paying even more attention even as he lifted his head and looked up into Tony's tender smile. He brushed wet hair off Peter's face as he knelt there in bed. But there was something else, too? A spider-sensed sliver of anticipation. "What, what're you... are you _up to something?"_

"I mean, that _is_ the point of cock-and-ball training, isn't it?" Tony steamrolled over him serenely. "CBT?" 

A breath. Two. "Oh my fucking god, we're such idiots."

Tony appeared to agree with him, nodding as he was with his lip half-bitten and sucked sarcastically between his teeth, head tilted, eyes squinting. "Ya think?" 

"So you thought-" 

"Yeah," Tony told him, even as he went for their sex stash, presumably looking for supplies.

"And I thought, in the store, that you just suddenly decided-" 

"Mmhmm."

"Oh my god," Peter said again. "I'm so embarrassed."

"Don't be," Tony said, dumping lube and a couple condoms on the bed by Peter's pillow. He moved down to the end, though, and urged Peter fully into his stomach with his thighs slightly apart. "You don't need to be embarrassed when there are so many better things you could be feeling right now," Tony informed him, palming at Peter's ass, thumbing up his crack in a way that made Peter's abs clench.

And then he licked a wet stripe right over Peter’s hole.

Peter all but whimpered, hanging onto his masculinity by a fingernail. He was so so ready for this after teasing and being teased all evening. He gasped more fully into his pillow as Tony's tongue continued its work, swirling and sucking at his sensitive rim. _Lordy,_ Peter thought, borrowing one of Tony's words.

If Peter was the king of blowjobs, then Tony was the undisputed _emperor_ of eating him out. That was just the way it was, and Peter couldn't be happier about it. _Fuck._

Tony backed off, though, with a bitten-off curse and an apology. "Sorry, sweetheart, I just gotta get these clothes off real fast. The cage is killing me under jeans, especially since you're turning me on. Fuck."

Peter laid his flushed cheek flat on his cool pillow. "Don't you want to just take it off, now that you know it's not for my therapy?" 

There was the sound of clothes hitting the floor and then the bed dipped again, closer to Peter's head. "No, I like it," Tony admitted. "You did a good job designing this one. You're so smart, baby."

Oh. Well _that_ sent good-tingles all over.

"Just undo this part, like I said before," Tony requested, and Peter knew exactly which part he meant without even looking. It had to be the loop around his sac that would keep Tony from his orgasm.

Peter, on his side, undid it without being asked again, and went to roll back to his stomach but Tony stopped him with a strong hand on his hip.

"I'm putting a condom on you, okay?"

 _Okayyy._ Peter didn't argue, though, because he knew it couldn't be what it seemed like. His pulse thrummed through him with a steady beat of trust and love and he didn't think Tony would fuck that up by trying to have the 'maybe you should top' discussion again. The boundary was there; Tony wouldn't challenge it.

It turned out Peter was right.

“This way you can come all over yourself and not make a mess,” Tony explained, rolling it on which was a trial for Peter’s senses anyway. He’d never worn one before and didn’t love the feeling, but there was something to being touched so proprietarily, and with such confidence where someone else, someone not Tony, would probably have fumbled.

As it was, Tony was as practiced as he was at everything else, despite the fact that Peter never made him wear anything like protection, not in years, having decided instead that he loved to be filled up. Tony smiled at him as if he knew what Peter thought about and grabbed his own pillow to stuff under Peter’s hips. _God, you’re the last thing I want to be protected from,_ Peter thought wildly.

“Don’t worry, kid, I got you. I’ll fill you up like you like. But first,” he trailed off, urging Peter back onto his front and to hitch his hips up. And while Peter’s mind was still caught on Tony being able to read his fucking mind, the man dove back into rimming him like his life depended on it.

The world stuttered in place for half a second before Peter sunk below the event horizon of his pleasure. Gone were the gentle ministrations of a moment ago. Now, Tony was practically punishing Peter’s hole with his lips and tongue, licking into him aggressively and sucking at any leftover shower water remaining on his skin. This was the kind of attention that told Peter he was about to get fucked just beautifully.

He buried his face in his pillow and just held on, grateful now for the latex restriction keeping him from spiraling too high and too fast. But that also meant that Peter could indulge his most demanding self and beg for more. “Harder, sir,” he lifted his head to demand.

Tony gave one last slurp to his fluttering rim, and then came up for air. “What, already? You’re so greedy, honey; I love it.”

And with that Tony doubled-down, laving over the little divot that marked the entrance to Peter’s body only once. Then he made his tongue a point and started fucking into Peter with it. _Goddamn,_ Peter couldn’t help but say internally, though all that came out of his mouth were little breathy wheezes and whines. He found himself fucking into Tony’s pillow, forward and back, completely involuntarily, which also meant he fucked himself back onto Tony’s tongue.

It was really difficult to open him up this way, Peter knew, because when he got turned on Peter had a tendency to clench down. Great for during actual sex, to milk Tony’s cock inside him, but not so much for this.

“Fingers,” Peter managed to gasp. He refused to call it begging.

His senses caught the thrilling skate of Tony’s gaze up his spine, even though Peter couldn’t see it happen. “Fuck, are you sure?” Tony asked him, and that was another thing to add to the list. Nowadays, Tony only asked him if he was sure once or twice, instead of fourteen million times like he used to when Peter was younger. “You’re always so tight.”

“And you love it,” Peter tossed back, levering himself up to grab the lube and throw it at someplace that he roughly figured might be Tony’s face.

Then he folded his arms under him to pillow his forehead and waited, but not long. Seconds later, there were wet, insistent fingertips on him. “What matters is how _you_ feel about it,” Tony grumped back at him, but he didn’t withhold that first slick finger.

Peter exhaled hard as it went in. “I love it, I love it, I love it,” he babbled uselessly. He wanted another finger but knew Tony would think it was too fast. “Fuck, Tony-”

“I know,” Tony replied which _meant absolutely nothing_ , not when he was still fucking that one finger relentlessly into Peter’s hole, with no sign of either slowing down or speeding up.

“Talk,” Peter demanded into his own arms. “Talk to me.”

His husband obliged him, with that voice like all things expensive and built to last in this world, like smoking, steamy-wet metal and all manner of other abstractly masculine things that Peter couldn’t _fucking_ think of just now, not when Tony suddenly flexed his finger deep, deep, deeper to glance against Peter’s prostate.

The blue streak Peter swore interrupted him, but Tony just kept talking and massaging at him until Peter nearly choked on his own spit and a short, deep orgasm burned through his gut. Peter tried to focus, but the world had gone watery and bright.

“I love you, honey. Can’t believe you planned tonight without me even suspecting. Sneaky and so needy. God, I love it, such a good surprise every time. You make me feel so good,” Tony told him, and Peter wanted to cry.

First, he wanted to cry because he really needed that second finger; coming the first time had done a bunch of nothing for his hard-on and he needed it again. Secondly, it was clear that Tony’d been listening to him, to what he’d said about praise sometimes focusing too much on Peter’s body, his youth. _He listened. He heard. He changed._

“I love you too,” Peter responded helplessly, because it was all he could think. _I love you so much._

With his free hand, Tony smoothed his way up Peter’s back to his neck and held him there. The angle of his finger changed and then widened and Peter could have sobbed with relief. _Two, finally._ More erotic still, Peter felt Tony’s knee dip the bed right next to his hip, felt the man’s leg hair tickle his skin a little. He was _this_ close to within fucking distance and Peter just… shook from it all. He shook all over.

“Good, you’re so good, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you,” Tony told him quietly, voice just audible over the obscene sound of lube getting spread around and into Peter’s tightness. Tony’s lovely, strong fingers were so perfect, Peter felt. Two of them were as wide as three of Peter’s own and it got him like the most lust-filled punch to the gut every time he thought about it. “So proud of you. So smart and mature, such a good partner for me. We’re perfect for each other. Can’t wait to fill you up, darling. I wanna make it so good for you-”

“You always do,” Peter told him. He felt compelled to try and lift his hips up since his neck was pinned, felt compelled to _do something_ , fuck Tony back, show him. Make him believe. “Always.”

Tony let go of him so Peter could turn over, and withdrew his fingers. That was something Peter could count on too; even though Peter could easily throw him off using his superhuman abilities, Tony made sure he never had to. “Yeah? That’s good, baby.” More nothing words, just little rhythms to hold their places while they did the real talking with bodies and hands and eyes.

Peter made grabby hands at Tony until he shuffled up between his knees. So fixed was Peter’s attention on Tony’s handsome face in the soft glow of their bedroom lights that he barely registered it when Tony pressed Peter’s legs up and further back. His hands were so light on Peter’s skin, and Peter was so responsive to them, it didn’t take much urging.

The only really rough thing was when Tony reached down and rolled the condom, now kind of gross on the inside, off of Peter. Peter shivered with over-sensitivity and tried to distract himself by watching Tony’s hands, but that only made him more desperate.

And that was before Tony did the wildest thing with what should have been trash and turned the thing inside-out and _slicked himself up with Peter’s come._

“Oh my god,” Peter huffed, head back and chest heaving. He couldn’t even watch that without threatening to unravel all over again, Jesus fucking Christ. “You did _not_ just do that, you fucking asshole.”

“I totally did,” Tony returned. “You ready? Tell me you want it; it belongs to you. Everything I got belongs to you, Peter. I trust you.”

Peter continued breathing hard and felt for Tony’s dick between them, the head of which he found resting right where it needed to be: up against Peter’s stretched hole. He groaned and tried not to shift his hips reflexively. He _did_ want it.

Also, Tony was still wearing the soft silicone cage, and this time Peter really did cry a little at the thought. “Oh my god,” he repeated, a tear leaking out. “That’s not allowed, is that allowed? You- you’re gonna- oh, shit, Tony, please. Please fuck me, you have to fuck me now, please.”

“Shhhh,” Tony hushed him and sunk inside. The design of the cage was new and exciting, totally fucking wild, literally ribbed for his pleasure, and Peter shut his brain off.

“Oh, _fuck._ ”

“I know, baby, I got you, don’t worry.”

Peter wasn’t worried. He wasn’t anything at all but fucked-open, a raw, singing nerve of pleasure. “Hnh- hm, Tony, oh my god, keep going-”

Tony kept going. Peter tried to arch his hips into it, tried to meet Tony’s thrusts and not even for any sort of reciprocal intent but just because he couldn’t help it, it felt so good. It was instinctual. He didn’t feel the need to pull his own weight sexually, but he also didn’t feel babied by Tony, didn’t feel like a lazy little prince. He just felt… good.

As the rhythm of their fucking built and Peter got used to the drag of Tony’s hard cock inside him, he started to get a feel for the realities of the cage. It was made of the same thing as his favorite dildo, but the fact that that was his husband’s body underneath the webbed pattern, the Spider-Man color, the _oh so very personal_ branding, that was what made it so good. “Mine,” he panted nonsensically, assured of it now.

“Fuck yes,” Tony told him immediately, grabbing at Peter’s leg to fuck ever closer and deeper. The backs of Peter’s thighs met his hips over and over and Tony appeared just as affected by it as Peter was.

The cage had a practical effect, too; it kept Tony’s cock extra firm through its stretching restriction and the ridge of it where it left the head open caught Peter’s rim on every thrust. As if the plump, silky head of Tony’s cock wasn’t enough to kill Peter on a good day, now it had a little extra bit behind it, and that helped stretch Peter just that extra millimeter, helped steal that extra bit of breath from his lungs. Tony took his hands from where they’d braced themselves to assist his jackhammering, took them down from the headboard and cradled one behind Peter’s neck, helping lift him a few inches to meet the hungry kiss he dropped like a bomb on Peter’s mouth, stealing all the air with it.

Peter tried to wind their arms together but Tony’s other hand was already palming over his nipples, his ribs, under his ribs where just the edges of his lungs were pounding. Tony’s thrusts slowed down, became longer and more dragging, but Peter still felt so amazing. “Are you getting enough air? Can you breathe? You feel good?”

_Yeah, I’m getting enough air. Could use a little more dick, though._

Tony laughed into his shoulder and ear, into the side of his neck, and Peter figured he probably said that out loud. He _was_ a little dizzy, a little cock-drunk. Their sex life never really slowed down, and he always came and it was fine, good even, but he couldn’t remember the last time, exactly, that it had been like _this._ There was good, which was him and his hand, and there was great which was him and Tony on a bad day, and there was exceptional which was them the rest of the time… and _then_ there was this.

“Tony,” he mumbled, arm over his eyes, trying to ignore how much he wanted to come again.

“Yes, dear, what is it?” He sounded out of breath.

“Take that fucking thing off. Just want you. Wanna come from just you,” Peter told him.

Tony cursed and withdrew, moving quickly, and Peter let his dropped hips bounce on the bed just once before he scrambled up. He took his pillow and beat it into submission, folding it and tucking half between the top edge of the headboard and the wall to make a place to rest his head while he sat up. Tony embraced him again, taking in the new position. “Like this, huh?”

“Yeah, like that,” Peter breathed, and twisted his left arm backward to grip the headboard beside his makeshift headrest. Tony took Peter’s hips and ass in both hands, still so strong, and helped Peter lift himself up into Tony's lap. Tony then occupied himself with pulling Peter onto his cock, and they both gave shaky breaths.

In this position, Peter could more easily wrap his legs around Tony’s waist and dig his heels in, urge him on, as Tony built momentum back up again. Through the strength of his own legs he kept himself seated on Tony’s dick, and Tony was able to let go of him and grip the headboard instead, one hand covering Peter’s this way while the other was alone as Peter preferred to wind his free hand around Tony’s neck and just hold on.

“Oh god, Peter, I love when you show off like this. You make it too easy on me, honey, you have the best ideas,” Tony ground out. His cock was bottoming out, able to go deeper this way with gravity helping him, and if Peter were prone to hyperbole he’d say he could taste it in the back of his throat. As it was, his prostate was taking the brunt of it and Peter felt electric, alive, toxic, radioactive, volatile, humming, a million things. He was gonna melt down soon.

“Yeah, I know. I can still teach you some new tricks, old man,” Peter managed, through his teeth. He inhaled roughly as Tony kissed him quiet, and Peter let him think he’d won something even as Peter pulled his own legs in against Tony’s still-fucking hips, pressing crossed ankles into the man’s spine as it ground forward.

Peter was able to change the angle that way, just a little, and it made Tony bite Peter’s lip before tearing his mouth away, and switch his thrusts to quick, grinding, deeply-seated little desperate motions that Peter doubted Tony could stop even if he had a gun to his head.

 _God, I love making you fall apart,_ Peter thought forcefully, just in case Tony really could read minds these days. Honestly, at this point, it wouldn’t have surprised him.

The new angle also made Tony’s cockhead slide _past_ and _over_ the sweet spot inside Peter’s body instead of nailing it punishingly and the way Tony crushed Peter to him with a litany of unintelligible praises made Peter’s cock bounce and slide between them and he _came_ like that, for the second time, hard and blinding and hot and completely blissed out of his mind, protected from everything in the world _but_ Tony.

“Guh,” Peter managed to get out. _Holy fuck._ There was probably come on the ceiling with that one. At least it felt like there must be; he might have passed out just a little, just for a second.

Tony took one hand off the headboard—the previously lonely one—and smoothed Peter’s hair back from his forehead. “And we’re back…? I think you’re done like Thanksgiving dinner, spider slut. You want me to stop?”

“No, don’t you dare, but keep your hand on my forehead,” Peter requested. _And your dick in my ass._

“Okay,” Tony murmured and he ground the thick, hot length of himself up and into Peter five or six more times, shakier each time, as Peter did his best to clench down on him in waves. It had the added effect of squeezing little dribbles of almost clear after-come out of Peter’s dick, a little mini-shockwave each time, and by the time Peter was closing his eyes with Tony’s mouth on his bared throat, he was almost exhausted.

Tony kissed him so, so gently at the hinge of his jaw under his ear, and his hips stilled so, so deep as he flooded Peter with a tickle of warmth. Peter sighed.

“We still got it, hmm?”

“Of course we do, Pete. Of course we do.”

***

Later, in the dark, Tony said, "I'm glad you're feeling better. Missed you, baby. Glad you're back to feeling... libidinous... again. Also, it’s possible your therapist doesn’t get paid nearly enough."

Peter couldn’t _see_ the eyebrow waggle, but he knew it was there.

"You- what? Oh my god, Tony, you can just say 'horny' like a normal person. Libidinous. Jesus Christ, my husband is a lunatic. And she gets paid plenty."

"It's a legitimate word! You clearly know what it means, even!" Tony tried hard to sound offended but he was pulling Peter closer into his chest so Peter could spot the lie easily. He kissed his collarbone. _A for effort._

"Yeah, but it sounds like French for 'the bidness',” Peter told him, keeping his more romantic thoughts to himself. “As in, 'mon chèr, give 'em le bidness',” he explained, complete with a horrendous fake French accent that would probably end up getting him remedial spy lessons from Nat in the near future.

"Shut the fuck up."

“Only if you go get our desserts. Also, fuck you, you first."


End file.
